Rumor Confirmed? Google Phone Coming in ’10?

TechCrunch is reporting that Google will be releasing their very own Google Phone sometime in early 2010. It was originally slated for this upcoming holiday season, but for whatever reason it isn’t. According to TC, current Android developers at Google are testing HTC’s upcoming Dragon device, which will be the Taiwan-based company’s flagship model. It is reportedly thinner than the DROID, which isn’t hard to do but it’s said to be thinner than the iPhone too.

Here’s what TechCrunch confirms to be true about the Google Phone.

Way more interesting are the rumors we’ve been hearing for months about a pure Google-branded phone. Most of our sources have unconfirmed information, which we describe below. But there are a few things we have absolutely confirmed: Google is building their own branded phone that they’ll sell directly and through retailers. They were long planning to have the phone be available by the holidays, but it has now slipped to early 2010. The phone will be produced by a major phone manufacturer but will only have Google branding (Microsoft did the same thing with their first Zunes, which were built by Toshiba).

There won’t be any negotiation or compromise over the phone’s design of features – Google is dictating every last piece of it. No splintering of the Android OS that makes some applications unusable. Like the iPhone for Apple, this phone will be Google’s pure vision of what a phone should be.

And here’s some information that hasn’t been confirmed about the Google Phone. It will supposedly be manufactured in Korea by either Samsung or LG. TC postulates that Samsung is out of the running because of its connection to Apple leaving LG to take its place. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen. TC goes on to say that Google is planning a large advertising push for the GPhone in January.